For weeks France has been engulfed in nationwide labor strikes with no end in sight. Strikes, sit-ins and protest rallies by public transport workers are into the second week amid reports that other disenchanted sectors are also getting ready to join the strikers.
At the outset, the workers were only demanding the government withdraw its decision according to which retirement age in the key transportation sector will increase.
However, after a few days workers from other sectors and university students also came on the streets. The situation is said to be such that some form of social movement in support of a welfare government is gaining currency in that country.
Compared to most European countries, France has a more powerful socialist and social justice system. In other words, it seems the French are pushing harder for better social and economic benefits including social security, bigger pensions, minimum working hours and meaningful government subsidies in education and health.
Such public outpour and systemic union-based demand is an indication that welfare governments have deep roots and immense popularity in France despite the extended presence of rightist regimes in Elysee Palace.
As his office was coming to an end, former French President Jacques Chirac and his rightwing tried hard to revise and reform the employment law. However, because his tenure was almost over and the election season had started with the search for political allies, the pace of reform slowed and had to wait for another time.
Now that Nicolas Sarkozy, representing France’s new rightist face is in power, the trend is moving fast toward the market economy and integration into the globalized economic order.
France’s right and conservatives insist the existing labor law is rooted in socialist platitudes of the 1950s and 1960s. This law simply cannot underwrite the economic needs of the industrial France or its ability to compete in the overcrowded international market, they claim.
The rightist lobby has demanded that the present labor law be consigned to history with new legislation in the interest of capitalism and its tried and tested teachings. It has also called for new impetus to the privatization process.
Increasing working hours, upping the retirement age by another two and half years, restoring the rights of employers to hire and fire are among changes sought by the embattled Sarkozy and his rightist enclave.
However, in contrast with the arguments of conservatives out to bolster economic productivity, France’s left comprising socialist and communist parties, workers syndicates and segments of students are demanding that economic and social benefits of the past be restored.
They say that the government is receiving more than enough revenues from high taxes and so is obliged to provide a better quality of socio-economic services and effectively address worker’s problems.
For now Paris’ decision to up the retirement age of the public transport workers is being openly challenged in the streets across France.
The nation is at crossroads. On the one hand, the rightists support the private sector against foreign rivals on the pretext of promoting the country’s economic interest. On the other, France’s leftist factions are calling for the return of welfare policies to improve the quality of life of millions of workers and those at the lower end of the economic ladder.
This is the beginning of the confrontation of socio-political ideologies in the early years of the 21st century France. Absence of a peaceful and negotiated settlement to the present crisis could upset its population and also have consequences across Europe.